Jessica glanced at the street corners. She did not see any police cameras. This was not a high-crime or high-drug-traffic area. She looked at the walls of the stone church. She did not see any surveillance cameras there, either.
When she stepped into the gated graveyard, Jessica saw the corpse, the now-familiar signature. The body was nude, a white middle-aged male, shaved clean. There was a band of paper around his forehead. The left foot rested on the headstone. Jessica crossed over to the plot, aimed her Maglite at the dead body, and saw the sharp bone protruding from the skin, just above the left knee. She thought about the line from Danse Macabre.
Zig, zig, zig, each one is frisking,
You can hear the cracking of the bones of the dancers.
Then Jessica leaned in, moved the victim's left leg a few inches, directed the beam of her flashlight at the headstone. At the top she saw:
O THEOS NA TIN ANAPAFSI
The name of the person in the grave was Melina Laskaris.
She angled the light to the victim's right hand, which was on the ground, palm up. On the ring finger she saw a small tattoo of a donkey. It was the seventh animal, which meant there was one more to go.
Before Jessica could stop her — and she didn't really want to stop her — Nicci Malone stepped forward, knelt down, pulled off the bloodied white headband. When Jessica saw the victim's face, the triangle was complete.
The dead woman was Lina Laskaris.
Her killer was Eduardo Robles.
The accomplice, the harmony in this horror show — the broken body sprawled before them in this crumbling graveyard — was Detective Dennis Stansfield.
Chapter 82
He stood in shadows, just a block from the Le Jardin hotel, the sounds of his city all around him, the flashing police lights a few blocks away. He felt the hand on his arm.
'Kevin.'
Christa-Marie looked fragile, sculpted from moonlight. She raised a hand to his cheek, a warm finger tracing the lines in his face. She slipped her hand around the back of his head, leaned forward and kissed him, gently at first, then with a growing passion.
A moment later she leaned back, looked into his eyes.
'It's time, isn't it?' she asked.
'Yes,' Byrne said. 'Are you ready?'
'Yes.' She took his hand in hers. 'Take me home.'
Chapter 83
'Jess?'
It was Russell Diaz. The city block had been taken over by law enforcement. Residents had begun to drift out of their houses. Endlessly, the helicopter flew back and forth, hovering overhead. Jessica looked around. David Albrecht was not to be found.
'You have a minute?' Diaz asked.
She did not. But she knew that this was coming, just as she knew what it was about. 'Sure.'
Diaz looked at his two men. 'Give us a second.'
The two officers walked a few feet away, leaned against Jessica's car. When Diaz felt they were out of earshot, he spoke.
'You know what I have to ask, don't you?' he said, lowering his voice.
Jessica remained silent. It was a rhetorical question. Diaz plowed ahead. Niceties were over.
'I need to talk to Kevin,' Diaz said. 'Have you heard from him?'
'Not since earlier this evening.'
'About what time was that?'
Jessica had to think about this. She had to be accurate. This was all going on the record. 'Maybe an hour ago.'
'He called you?'
'Yes.'
'Did he mention where he was going?'
Now she had to be careful. Byrne had not said anything specific. 'No.'
'Is he still driving that van?'
'I don't know.'
Diaz looked out over the gathering crowd, back.
'I want to show you something.'
They walked over to the unmarked police van. Diaz opened the sliding side door. Inside was a rack of electronic equipment, surveillance monitors, three locked gun racks. Diaz grabbed a laptop off the front seat, opened it, put it on the floor of the van. The screen instantly displayed a flow chart. On it were six different squares. Diaz clicked the first one.
Seconds later three separate documents cascaded across the screen. Jessica recognized them as PPD witness statements, presented in. pdf format.
'We have statements from three people who live on West Tioga Street,' Diaz said. 'Neighbors of Sharon and Kenneth Beckman. They all stated that they saw Detective Byrne at the Beckman house an hour before her son reported her missing.'
'She was next of kin, Russell. Both Kevin and I were there that morning. We made notification.'
'As you know, he returned a short time later. Did you accompany Detective Byrne back to the premises?'
'No,' Jessica said. 'He returned to follow up. We had received additional information.'
'What was the information?'
Diaz knew the answer to his question. He was testing her. 'That Kenneth Beckman was questioned in the murder of Antoinette Chan.'
'When did Detective Byrne return to the Roundhouse?'
'It had to be around three.'
'What did he say about the interview?'
'He said that Sharon Beckman didn't answer the door.'
Diaz took a moment, then tapped another square on the chart. This was the ME's preliminary report on Joseph Novak. 'The coroner puts the time of death for Joseph Novak at between eight p.m. and six a.m. Do you know where Detective Byrne was during those hours?'
This was getting so bad, so fast. Was Diaz making an attempt to establish some sort of conspiracy here?
'I do not.'
'Did Detective Byrne mention anything about seeing Mr. Novak again that day?'
'No.'
Diaz hit yet another button on the laptop. A grainy video began to play. It was the stationary image of a city street at night.
'This is PPD surveillance footage near the corner of Frankford and York.'
At the thirty-four-second mark on the video a man crosses the top of the frame, hesitates for a moment, walks off frame. A few seconds later, a second man walks across the frame, right to left. He continues off. Diaz rewound the recording. He pointed to the lower right of the image, at a van parked on the street. 'This tag is
